Sport's Defining Moments 3: Ayrton Senna
Death in sport is aberrant, let's be clear. That's the whole point about sport. We worked out a way for the finest specimens of every land to compete against each other with every ounce of their being, with the weight of their countries/families/teams upon them, but without the death. Sport is better than conquest, better than war, better than diplomacy. If people regularly die in sport, what's the point of it? Might as well go and have a duel instead.
It's taken a while for some sports to fully get the hang of this. There has been too much death in some sports, far too much. Watching horse racing as I was growing up, I struggled with a sport where death for its participants was so regular and no reason to stop the show. But how could it be any other way?
And boxing, you might say, boxing, only ever one second away from tragedy? Prizefighters still suffer terrible injuries, sometimes, rarely, even death. As a boxing fan, I can't shy away from that. I know what the difference is. I know that for me it's the full participation and collaboration, the evenness of odds, the control that can be kept, the fact that the sport of boxing IS hit and be hit, but that doesn't wash with some people. Boxing has cleaned up its act in terms of fighter safety immeasurably.
As has Formula 1, thank goodness. It's genuinely shocking if you should look through a list of the great drivers of the 50s, 60s and 70s to see just how many of the met a grisly end, both on the track and off it. Perhaps that "and off it" is important to Motor sport apologists (if any are needed). These are men of a different breed - if they weren't going to die in a Formula 1 race, there's a chance they'd die in a car crash, a plane crash, a helicopter crash. But a lot of them did die on the track, and thankfully,the likes of Jackie Stewart realised that, actually, it didn't have to be that way. Their lives didn't have to be so thoroughly on the line every time they raced.
Improvements could be made. They were made, but not, in the end, not quite fast enough. There were fewer and fewer driver deaths in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and there hasn't actually now been a Formula 1 death since ... you probably know since when. Since May 1st 1994.
You may have seen 'Senna', in which case you hardly need this post. You may have watched it as a Formula 1 fan or not, like me. It's a stunning documentary. Ayrton Senna was a remarkable character, the epitome of the romantic notion of a great driver. Preternaturally gifted, charismatic etc. How absurd that us Brits had to support Nigel Mansell against him in the 80s and 90s! No, please let me be Brazilian.
One view of Senna was that he considered himself almost immortal, but it was more that he was touched by the hand of God and in the hands of God. He wasn't immortal. He crashed and died, the day after another, lesser known driver, Roland Ratzenberger, had died in qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix.
Doom was in the air. Rather than go through the full facts of the weekend, I'm just going to quickly take myself back to my own memories of the weekend. I don't often watch Formula 1. I wasn't that weekend. I was watching sport, so when Ratzenberger died in qualifying, I saw news of it on Grandstand. Likewise on Sunday, I think I was switching between channels, but certainly did not see the Senna crash. The retrospective sense of inevitability. Of course.
I left the house to go to a meeting before the news was confirmed - it was a sombre, shocked meeting, a Christian meeting as it happens, as the news came through. Death should not belong in sport.
I remember another incident from those Godly days of mine, a meeting the next Friday where one chap, out loud, prayed for Senna and said how his death really meant a lot, that he'd seemed like a superhuman and been a real hero, and then, bizarrely, another fellow (in prayer) scolded the other chap's prayer as, you know, there were tens of thousands dying in Rwanda and what did one person matter in the scheme of things?
Weird, really. That issue's never one I've got my head round a taken a side on. Sometimes, idolatry of the few seems so obscene, but then, when it's someone who means something to us, who's touched us and moved us and who clearly represents something, albeit disproportionately, it's no longer obscene.
It's not awful that the nation mourned Princess Diana. Bit weird quite how far it went, obviously. But I mourned Paul Newman, I watched a program about Paul Newman just last week and it almost brought me to tears. Paul Newman means something to me (Did you know that Paul Newman once came 2nd in the 24 Hours of Le Mans? Like, for real). Ayrton Senna meants a lot to a lot of people, Brazilians and sports fans around the world. His death is one of the most shocking and iconic moments in the history of sport. His death has probably saved the lives of countless other drivers.
Of course, nothing can ever be made perfectly safe in sport, whether its cricket or Marathon running or rugby or boxing or swimming. And it is true that part of our enjoyment comes from that strange tension, that understanding that this is real, this is pain, this is danger, whether it's in the mountains in the Tour de France, or two bloodied sluggers touching gloves at the start of the 12th round of a brutal encounter.
But if sports authorities aren't doing everything in their power to prevent death, then sport means a lot less than it should. Sport is better than war.
It's taken a while for some sports to fully get the hang of this. There has been too much death in some sports, far too much. Watching horse racing as I was growing up, I struggled with a sport where death for its participants was so regular and no reason to stop the show. But how could it be any other way?
And boxing, you might say, boxing, only ever one second away from tragedy? Prizefighters still suffer terrible injuries, sometimes, rarely, even death. As a boxing fan, I can't shy away from that. I know what the difference is. I know that for me it's the full participation and collaboration, the evenness of odds, the control that can be kept, the fact that the sport of boxing IS hit and be hit, but that doesn't wash with some people. Boxing has cleaned up its act in terms of fighter safety immeasurably.
As has Formula 1, thank goodness. It's genuinely shocking if you should look through a list of the great drivers of the 50s, 60s and 70s to see just how many of the met a grisly end, both on the track and off it. Perhaps that "and off it" is important to Motor sport apologists (if any are needed). These are men of a different breed - if they weren't going to die in a Formula 1 race, there's a chance they'd die in a car crash, a plane crash, a helicopter crash. But a lot of them did die on the track, and thankfully,the likes of Jackie Stewart realised that, actually, it didn't have to be that way. Their lives didn't have to be so thoroughly on the line every time they raced.
Improvements could be made. They were made, but not, in the end, not quite fast enough. There were fewer and fewer driver deaths in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and there hasn't actually now been a Formula 1 death since ... you probably know since when. Since May 1st 1994.
You may have seen 'Senna', in which case you hardly need this post. You may have watched it as a Formula 1 fan or not, like me. It's a stunning documentary. Ayrton Senna was a remarkable character, the epitome of the romantic notion of a great driver. Preternaturally gifted, charismatic etc. How absurd that us Brits had to support Nigel Mansell against him in the 80s and 90s! No, please let me be Brazilian.
One view of Senna was that he considered himself almost immortal, but it was more that he was touched by the hand of God and in the hands of God. He wasn't immortal. He crashed and died, the day after another, lesser known driver, Roland Ratzenberger, had died in qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix.
Doom was in the air. Rather than go through the full facts of the weekend, I'm just going to quickly take myself back to my own memories of the weekend. I don't often watch Formula 1. I wasn't that weekend. I was watching sport, so when Ratzenberger died in qualifying, I saw news of it on Grandstand. Likewise on Sunday, I think I was switching between channels, but certainly did not see the Senna crash. The retrospective sense of inevitability. Of course.
I left the house to go to a meeting before the news was confirmed - it was a sombre, shocked meeting, a Christian meeting as it happens, as the news came through. Death should not belong in sport.
I remember another incident from those Godly days of mine, a meeting the next Friday where one chap, out loud, prayed for Senna and said how his death really meant a lot, that he'd seemed like a superhuman and been a real hero, and then, bizarrely, another fellow (in prayer) scolded the other chap's prayer as, you know, there were tens of thousands dying in Rwanda and what did one person matter in the scheme of things?
Weird, really. That issue's never one I've got my head round a taken a side on. Sometimes, idolatry of the few seems so obscene, but then, when it's someone who means something to us, who's touched us and moved us and who clearly represents something, albeit disproportionately, it's no longer obscene.
It's not awful that the nation mourned Princess Diana. Bit weird quite how far it went, obviously. But I mourned Paul Newman, I watched a program about Paul Newman just last week and it almost brought me to tears. Paul Newman means something to me (Did you know that Paul Newman once came 2nd in the 24 Hours of Le Mans? Like, for real). Ayrton Senna meants a lot to a lot of people, Brazilians and sports fans around the world. His death is one of the most shocking and iconic moments in the history of sport. His death has probably saved the lives of countless other drivers.
Of course, nothing can ever be made perfectly safe in sport, whether its cricket or Marathon running or rugby or boxing or swimming. And it is true that part of our enjoyment comes from that strange tension, that understanding that this is real, this is pain, this is danger, whether it's in the mountains in the Tour de France, or two bloodied sluggers touching gloves at the start of the 12th round of a brutal encounter.
But if sports authorities aren't doing everything in their power to prevent death, then sport means a lot less than it should. Sport is better than war.
Comments
Post a Comment